The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 2024–2025
Stream2Sea made a sunscreen that feeds coral instead of just being safe
Reef Relief is the first sunscreen tested to nourish coral (+36% vertical growth), beating ordinary 'reef-safe' labels.
Stream2Sea
the move
Chemical sunscreens have long been implicated in coral decline, but even many 'reef-safe' formulas were only tested for what they avoid, not for what they actually do to coral.
McCann Demand, working with Stream2Sea and the University of Derby, grew coral in the lab and benchmarked products. Their mineral base was shown to nourish coral — producing 36% vertical and 7% wet weight growth — and the product was named Reef Relief.
By proving a positive effect rather than a neutral one, Stream2Sea set a new benchmark for ocean-friendly sun protection and created the world's first official certification for reef-safe products.
why it works
- It tests against a living organism, so the claim is empirical rather than cosmetic.
- 'Nourishes coral' is a higher bar than 'reef-safe', which is now the industry's ceiling.
- A certification standard lets the whole category be judged on the same evidence.
- Being a product innovation, it changes what shoppers buy rather than the message they hear.
what transfers
Where the category standard is 'safe', raise the bar to 'beneficial': test against a living system and let the data become both the claim and the standard.
what came after
Reef Relief was awarded a Bronze Lion at Cannes in the Innovation category, and the programme grew to more than 30 partners around the world. It established a certification that other 'reef-safe' products could be measured against, turning a single product claim into a category standard.
references
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